In the case where an accident or disaster occurs, a large number of injured persons and sick persons may rush to medical facilities for a short period of time in want of medical care. However, the functions (medical staff, equipment, medical supplies, etc.) of medical facilities are limited. In order to provide the largest possible number of sick and injured persons with medical treatment under restricted conditions at the time of disaster, it is necessary to determine the priority order of medical treatment and backward conveyance according to the urgency and seriousness of sickness and injuries.
The work for determining such a priority order is called “triage”, and for the triage, an identification tag called a triage tag is used. Usually, the triage tag is color-coded into four stages (red, yellow, green, and black) according to the urgency and seriousness of sickness and injuries, and is used by being attached to the patient's body. The triage tag is also used as a simplified chart describing the symptom, blood pressure, blood type, and the like of a patient.
Usually, for the triage work, a doctor or nurse called a triage officer (a person responsible for execution of triage) makes determination, and at the same time, measures the patient's blood pressure, heart rate, and the like.
Generally, the use of medical appliances for an unspecified large number of patients may cause secondary damage such as blood infection. Therefore, the secondary usage of injection needles and the like is prohibited absolutely. Also, since a cuff used for measuring blood pressure has a large contact area with the patient's body, the cuff having been used once must be sterilized surely.
However, in the case of the above-described emergency, it is difficult to remove a cuff cover one by one from the cuff and to sterilize the cuff cover. Accordingly, a throwaway cuff cover as disclosed, for example, in Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H08-579) has been proposed.
This disclosed cuff cover can cover up the cuff by affixing a sheet made of nonwoven fabric or paper to the cuff. However, this cuff cover has problems as described below.
Generally, manometers include a mercury manometer, aneroid manometer, and automatic manometer, and the shape of cuff differs according to the type of manometer. Therefore, it is impossible to use the cuff cover described in Patent Document 1 for all types of cuffs.
Also, some cuffs are of a large-size type integrating the cover. The proposed cover cannot be affixed to this type of cuff. Furthermore, the affixation of the cuff cover described in Patent Document 1 to the cuff at the emergency time as described above is almost impossible in terms of time and manpower.